1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a first come first serve mechanism that controls the access to a single resource by at least two clients.
2. Description of Related Art
Computer architectures are sometimes configured so that two or more clients access the same resource. For example, a plurality of microprocessors may request access to another processor or a memory device. A system with two clients seeking access to the same resource may result in a situation where the resource receives conflicting request, simultaneous request and deadlock. To prevent these undesirable events from occurring, many systems employ an arbitration mechanism to schedule and route the request from the clients to the resource. Existing arbitration mechanisms typically include a first-come-first-serve (FCFS) scheduler that contains a first-in-first-out (FIFO) queue. FIFO queues are relatively slow and are subject to request contention when two or more request are simultaneously received by the arbitration mechanism. It would be desirable to provide a FCFS scheduler that was relatively fast, and was not susceptible to either deadlock or node contention.